[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., ALA., OHIO, ILL., TENN., LA., ARK.

[Rick Halperin]

April 22



TEXAS----impending execution

Jasper awaits execution of James Byrd slayer



James Byrd Jr. told his family that he would “put Jasper, Texas, on the map” 
one day, and he did.

“He thought it would be because of his music,” said Louvon Harris, one of his 
sisters, recalling the confident young man who played trumpet in the school 
band and sang exuberantly in the church choir or for anyone he thought it would 
bring joy to.

“Never did we think it would be because of his death.”

But it was Byrd’s murder — a horrific, white-on-black hate crime along a lonely 
country road — that brought notoriety to this East Texas town and created an 
impression that locals say was never quite true and has taken years to correct.

They hope Wednesday’s scheduled execution of killer John William King will be 
the final act in a searing legal and moral drama that has lasted nearly 21 
years.

“Now when you mention Jasper, you associate Jasper with James,” Harris said. 
“It’s sad to know it was for a different reason than he anticipated.”

Byrd, a 49-year-old African-American known and liked around town, took a ride 
from King, a buddy of his from prison and another friend who worked at the 
local movie house. In an unconscionable rage in the early hours of June 7, 
1998, the white men wound up chaining Byrd by his ankles to the bumper of a 
1982 Ford pickup and dragging him for 3 miles before dumping his body on the 
side of the road.

The crime and the quick arrest of the killers — King a shocking figure with 
white supremacist tattoos — devastated the townspeople here as deeply as it did 
the rest of the nation. Yet from the beginning, their grief was overshadowed by 
the growing stereotype of their community as a place where the whites were 
mostly racists and the blacks lived in constant fear.

The people of Jasper did their best to prove the outsiders wrong. They stayed 
indoors when the Ku Klux Klan marched through town. They did the same when the 
New Black Panthers Party marched through. Clergy members preached forgiveness 
and worked hard to keep lines of communication open.

They came together to address areas of legitimate concern, such as racial 
disparities in local hiring.

The Rev. Kenneth Lyons, the Byrd family’s minister at Greater New Bethel 
Baptist Church, drew up a list of names that he hoped would save Jasper. For 20 
years, he has kept it tucked inside the Bible under the lid of his pulpit.

Recalling scripture where God offered to save a city for the sake of 10 
honorable men, Lyons drew up his own list.

Among the names is a fellow minister, a woman who “played a big role during 
that time” and one of James Byrd Sr.’s good friends.

“I began to think of 10 people in Jasper who I knew were sincere and earnest,” 
he recalled. “And this is what I said: I said, ‘Lord, here are the 10 that I 
have found here in Jasper, Texas. You said if you could find 10 in Sodom and 
Gomorrah, you would save it. And here’s 10 from Jasper, Texas. Save it.’”

Faith, he and others say, may have done just that.

“There was kind of a rally in the faith,” said Eddie Hopkins, executive 
director of the Jasper Economic Development Corp., likening it to the coming 
together that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I think that same kind 
of sentiment happened after James Byrd. I think there was a rally in the 
faith.”

The Ministerial Alliance, with leaders from about 30 churches in and around 
Jasper, stepped in immediately.

“We all spoke with one voice,” Lyons said. “When the Black Panthers came to 
town, the black preachers spoke out against it. When the Ku Klux Klan came, the 
white ministers spoke out against it. To show harmony, to show them that Jasper 
was of one accord.”

The work inside the community didn’t stop the stain from spreading.

“We were stereotyped,” said Billy Rowles, Jasper County sheriff at the time. “I 
was stereotyped as a pot-bellied, beer-drinking, East Texas redneck, racist 
sheriff. They portrayed me that way and our community as a bunch of racists and 
bigots and zeroes.

“It broke your heart, how they portrayed us.”

The economy suffered, too.

“Doctors wouldn’t come; businesses wouldn’t come,” said the Rev. Ron Foshage of 
St. Michael’s Catholic Church. “People moved out. It’s been very difficult 
because we live with this stigma.”

Foshage, Rowles and Lyons insist that the stereotypes were overhyped. In 2019, 
there are signs that attitudes have softened.

A large tech support business headquartered in Brewton, Ala., is remodeling a 
building across from the courthouse for a new Texas location that promises to 
add as many as 250 jobs. Provalus chose Jasper out of 50 prospective cities 
across the country.

Landing the company wasn’t easy, said Hopkins of the economic development 
group.

“One of the things that came up in a conversation with the corporation’s 
president was James Byrd,” he said. “Not that we were going to have to convince 
him that we’d overcome it, but the clients that they work for. When they see 
‘Provalus: Jasper, Texas,’ there’s always going to be those questions of, how 
safe will my employees be if they go to Jasper? Questions like that.”

People weren’t exactly fearful, said Century 21 Realtor Liz McClurg, but they 
were leery.

Prior to Byrd’s death, McClurg said, it took her an average of 30 to 45 days to 
sell a home. After, it would take about 270 days.

“Nobody wanted to come here — to live, to work, to start a business, to 
relocate,” she said. “I would just tell them: Come meet our people, come visit 
our shops, come see our schools. I stressed to my clients that the perception 
that they may have is not a pattern, it’s not a mentality.”

Foshage was part of a task force formed after Byrd’s death to tackle other 
issues.

“Myself and other members of the task force personally went to the banks, the 
courthouse, the car dealers. And we asked them to hire African-Americans,” the 
priest said. “And they agreed. Many people didn’t realize that there were no 
African-Americans in many of the Jasper businesses.”

Hopkins said the economy is getting better, but progress has been slow.

“It happened,” he said of the murder. “And we’re never, ever going to be able 
to dismiss the fact that it did. However, we have to live in spite of it. We 
have to go on. There has to be commerce. There has to be economy. There has to 
be life as normal as we can have it.”

Caden Bynum, 15, wasn’t alive at the time of the murder, and his mother, 
29-year-old Linda Bynum, wasn’t old enough at the time to remember much. But 
both often are surprised by the opinions of those outside their town.

“We went to a college in Orange, and people looked at us like, ‘Oh my gosh, you 
live there?’” Linda Bynum said while dining with her son at a Jasper 
restaurant. “There are so many people outside of Jasper that look at this town 
as a racist town. Really and truthfully, it’s not. Most people are loving 
here.”

Caden Bynum, who plays on the high school football team, said the Byrd story 
occasionally is discussed in the classroom. He doesn’t hear other students 
making racist remarks. That’s not a word his generation would use to describe 
Jasper.

Capt. James Carter, a 30-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office, blames the media 
for making the town appear that way.

“They blew it all out of proportion,” he said. “It wasn’t like they said it 
was.”

Carter grew up with the Byrds.

“We rode the bus together. We played after school. We went to church together. 
They were more like my family than a friend,” he said.

He went with then-Sheriff Rowles to inform the family of Byrd’s death. The 
details are as horrifying now as they were 21 years ago.

Byrd was a former vacuum cleaner salesman who lived on disability and had an 
apartment but no vehicle. So he walked, sometimes accepting rides from passing 
townsfolk.

He was walking home when King, Shawn Allen Berry and Lawrence Russell Brewer 
offered to give him a ride in Berry’s pickup. Out on an old logging road, court 
evidence would later show, they shared cigarettes and beer.

Then the unthinkable happened. Byrd was chained by his ankles to the bumper of 
Berry’s truck and dragged 3 miles down Huff Creek Road. His remains, naked and 
decapitated, were dumped outside a black church and a neighboring cemetery at 
the end of the road.

“I don’t think he was chosen,” Carter said. The attackers had “their minds made 
up.”

“It could have been anybody that night.”

Lyons’ congregation was in Sunday school when the news broke.

“It brought back memories of the ’30s and ’40s when our race was treated in 
that kind of way,” he said. “And I think most of us just couldn’t come to 
grasp, to believe it. We had come so far.”

The killers were all found guilty of capital murder. Berry, 44, is serving a 
life sentence, eligible for parole in 2038. Brewer was executed in 2011. King, 
the 1at to stand trial, is scheduled to die Wednesday evening in Huntsville.

In 2001, then-Gov. Rick Perry signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, 
creating harsher penalties for crimes committed on the basis of race, religion, 
age, gender, disability, national origin or sexual orientation.

8 years later, Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate 
Crimes Prevention Act, linking the Byrd case to the slaying 3 months later of a 
young gay man in Laramie, Wyo.

“Hate is a learned behavior,” Harris said last week as she prepared for the 
upcoming execution, which she and her sister Clara Taylor will attend. “Learned 
can be unlearned.”

Of the punishments, she said, “There’s closure in a sense that justice was 
served, but the reality of the impact that it created for our family is that 
James is gone forever. I don’t think anything could close that chapter.”

Those who lived through the tragedy haven’t forgotten, but they continue moving 
forward.

“Jasper, Texas, won,” former Sheriff Rowles said. “We may have a little scar 
and it’s healed up some, but we won.”

Robert Cowles, 62, a landscaper who moved to the area from North Carolina a few 
years after the murder, said he walks the same streets that Byrd once did with 
no fear, pushing his mower from one lawn job to the next.

As he walked past the now-shuttered Jasper Twin Cinema, he reflected on the 
parallels between his life and that of Byrd, a man he’d never met.

“He really was doing nothing but walking,” Cowles said. “He just loved to walk, 
like me.”

Foshage, the priest, remains a focal point for peace in Jasper. He spoke with 
Hearst Newspaper effortlessly, as if from a script, always smiling. It was 
clear he had done more than a few interviews over the past 2 decades.

Asked if Jasper is looking forward to the day the interviews will stop, Foshage 
kept smiling and answered softly:

“Yes, we are.”

(source: Beaumont Enterprise)








GEORGIA:

Going it alone, death-penalty defendant confronts would-be jurors



It was the kind of question no one could imagine.

“So if in this case, and this is an if, you were picked for the jury and you 
did find the defendant — me — guilty of … starving a child, my own child, and 
burning her body, would you be able to consider life with parole as an option 
or would death be the necessary action taken? ” Tiffany Moss asked.

The 35-year-old Gwinnett County woman posed it last week to a Transportation 
Security Administration officer who’s a potential juror for her death-penalty 
trial. Because Moss is acting as her own attorney, she found herself asking the 
unthinkable.

Taken aback, and clearly uncomfortable, the TSA officer — Juror No. 52 — said 
death would be his “1st priority.”

Jury selection, which consumed all of last week, will wrap up soon in this 
extremely rare instance in which a capital defendant is going it alone. Despite 
the recommendations of almost everyone, Moss has refused to be represented by 
two experienced state capital defenders who were assigned her case. (Instead, 
they have been appointed “standby counsel” and sit behind Moss in the courtroom 
gallery ready to help if she asks for it.)

Atlanta attorney Ken Driggs, who has represented capital defendants at trial 
and on appeal, spent time in court last week to see how Moss was doing. He left 
unimpressed.

Because Moss is not raising any objections, he said, she cannot appeal possible 
errors during her trial if she’s convicted and sentenced to death.

“When you represent yourself you can’t complain about your mistakes,” Driggs 
said. “You are stuck with the consequences of your mistakes or lack of 
knowledge.”

So far, more than 70 prospective jurors have been questioned about their 
thoughts on capital punishment and the criminal justice system to see whether 
they can be qualified as fair and impartial.

The jurors are also asked what they think about Moss’s decision to exercise her 
constitutional right to represent herself.

“I guess I feel that it’s kind of shocking,” Juror No. 56 said, looking over to 
Moss sitting alone by herself at the defense table.

“It might not be the most logical decision,” said Juror No. 17, a Gwinnett 
librarian.

“I would just say I hope she’s been given some guidance,” said Juror No. 41, a 
retired elementary school teacher. “That does bother me a little (but) you said 
it was her choice. You have to respect that.”

Others said they just wanted to know why Moss had made such a decision. (They 
were never told why, although Moss has said she’s putting her faith in God’s 
hands.)

Most jurors said they would not hold Moss’s self-representation against her or 
the state.

Juror No. 63, a school support technician, was an exception. “I think I would 
have a little bias,” she said, referring to Moss.

During jury selection, Superior Court Judge George Hutchinson has read the 
sobering indictment to panels of prospective jurors. This includes the 
murder-by-starvation allegation, various child cruelty charges and her alleged 
attempt to conceal the crime.

Then, one juror at a time sits alone in the jury box, first to answer questions 
posed by the judge. District Attorney Danny Porter or assistant DA Lisa Jones 
are next.

When it’s Moss’s turn, she most often smiles and tells Hutchinson, “No 
questions, your honor.” On very few occasions, however, she poses the question 
about the starvation and burning of her stepchild.

When she does speak, Moss is polite and pleasant, sometimes bubbling up with 
nervous laughter. Some jurors return her smile, while others cast a curious 
glace at the woman they’d just been told is accused of starving and burning her 
stepchild.

According to law enforcement, 10-year-old Emani Moss weighed just 32 pounds 
when her charred body was found in the fall of 2013.

On two occasions, Moss won challenges to keep potential jurors in the final 
selection pool. This occurred after prosecutors sought to disqualify them 
because they said they would be reluctant to vote for a death sentence.

One of them, Juror No. 30, a veterinary nurse, told Porter she had signed 
petitions opposing capital punishment. “I’m personally not a fan of it,” she 
said.

But when Porter asked her if she could consider all 3 sentencing options — life 
in prison with the possibility of parole, life without parole or the death 
penalty — the juror said, “I would like to think I could.”

As Porter continued to question her, the woman admitted to having bad 
experiences with law enforcement. One was being handcuffed by police as a 
teenager after squirting water from a car into the face of a taxi driver. 
Another included a friend she believed was wrongly convicted of a sexual 
assault.

After probing that, Porter finally asked Juror No. 30 if, given her views and 
life experiences, she could truly vote for the death penalty.

“I’ve been against it for so long,” the woman said, equivocating.

Porter later moved to have Juror No. 30 disqualified.

But Moss reminded Hutchinson the woman had said she could consider all three 
sentencing options, including death. Hutchinson granted Moss a small victory 
and kept the woman in the jury pool.

At the same time, Moss has stumbled a number of times. On one occasion, she 
failed to try and disqualify a juror who’d said she could not vote to sentence 
a person convicted of killing a child to life in prison with the possibility of 
parole.

Anther occasion involved Juror No. 138, who said she’d once supported capital 
punishment but now opposed it.

Experienced defense lawyers would have questioned such a juror to try and get 
her to admit that, in especially egregious cases, she could still vote for 
death. Such a concession could make her a qualified juror and one favored by 
the defense.

When Hutchinson asked Moss if she had any questions for this juror, Moss 
appeared to sense this possibility. She called for her standby lawyers, Brad 
Gardner and Emily Gilbert, and they spoke to her at length at the defense 
table. As they gave instructions, Moss repeatedly nodded her head in agreement.

After Gardner and Gilbert returned to their seats, Hutchinson asked Moss if she 
had anything to say. “No questions, your honor,” Moss said with a smile.

(source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)








ALABAMA:

Prosecutors seeking death penalty for man accused of killing 11-year-old in 
DeKalb County



Prosecutors will seek death penalty for 11-year-old girl’s murder in DeKalb 
County----There’s been a new development in the case of a DeKalb County man 
accused of abducting and killing an 11-year-old girl.



Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty against Christopher Madison.

Madison is charged with capital murder in the death of Amberly Barnett. She was 
found strangled in the wooded area behind Madison’s home in Collinsville last 
month. She had been reported missing before her body was found.

Chief Investigator David Davis testified at Madison’s preliminary hearing in 
March that during a search of Madison’s home they found blood and hair in 
multiple locations along with other key pieces of evidence.

(source: WAFF news)








OHIO:

3 years after killings, Rhoden murder case works way through court



3 years ago Monday, tragedy struck Appalachian Ohio.

On April 22, 2016, 8 members of the Rhoden family were found shot to death in 4 
separate homes in rural Pike County. 3 children — an infant, a 6-month-old and 
a 3-year-old — were found alive and physically unharmed among the bodies.

For more than 2 1/2 years, the case remained unsolved. Then, this past 
November, Angela and George “Billy” Wagner III and their 2 adult sons were 
arrested and charged with aggravated murder. 2 other Wagner relatives were 
arrested and charged with ancillary crimes related to the homicides.

As the anniversary approaches, here’s a recap and a look at where things stand 
today:

The victims

Christopher Rhoden Sr., 40; his ex-wife Dana Rhoden, 47; their children, Hanna 
Rhoden, 19, Christopher Rhoden Jr., 16, and Clarence “Frankie” Rhoden, 20; 
Frankie Rhoden’s fiancée, Hannah Gilley, 20; Christopher Sr.’s brother Kenneth 
Rhoden, 44, and cousin Gary Rhoden, 38.

The crime scenes

Chris and Gary were found in Chris’s trailer on Union Hill Road. They were the 
only 2 not shot while in their beds, and authorities have said the killers 
dragged their bodies through the house. Chris had been shot at least once 
through a door, scene evidence and wood fragments on his body found during an 
autopsy showed. He also had been shot more than any other victim: 9 times.

Frankie and Hannah were found dead in their beds in the trailer next door. 
Frankie’s 3-year-old son from a previous relationship was found unharmed in the 
living room — with cartoons playing on the television — when Dana’s sister 
discovered the bodies just before 8 a.m.

Dana and Hanna and Chris Jr. were found in a trailer they’d recently moved to 
about a mile up Union Hill Road. Home from the hospital less than 48 hours 
after giving birth, Hanna had her infant daughter by her side.

Kenneth’s body was the last discovered, several hours later. He was dead in the 
bed of his remote camper about a 15-minute car ride away.

The Wagners

Hanna and Edward “Jake” Wagner had a 3-year-old daughter together, Sophia. She 
was staying with Jake on the night of the killings. About a year after the 
homicides, Angela and Billy Wagner and Jake and his brother George IV moved to 
Kenai, Alaska, a place where they later told the Cincinnati Enquirer they had 
hunted and fished before. They said they wanted to get Sophia away from the 
spotlight and the stress of the case. A year later, the family returned to Pike 
County.

The charges

Billy, Angela, Jake and George IV are all charged with 8 counts of aggravated 
murder, which carry a possible death penalty if convicted, and more than a 
dozen other charges that include aggravated burglary; tampering with evidence; 
engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity; unauthorized use of property; 
interception of communications; conspiracy; and unlawful possession of a 
dangerous ordnance.

Billy’s mother, Fredericka Wagner, is charged with perjury and obstructing 
justice. She’s accused of lying to a grand jury about the purchase of 2 
bulletproof vests. Rita Newcomb, Angelas’s mother, is charged with forging 
custody documents for Jake and Hanna’s case, as well as for George VI’s custody 
case.

The motive

Authorities have said obsession to control and obsession with custody of 
children was at the root of the killings.

The evidence delivery

At each defendant’s hearing, prosecutors have said they are turning over 
evidence as quickly as they can. That includes multiple hard drives of 
information; social media screenshots; a Walmart receipt; more than 1,400 
crime-scene photos; and cell phone records.

The trials

All 6 charged have pleaded not guilty. Fredericka Wagner’s trial is set to 
begin July 29, and Rita Newcomb’s is set to begin July 8. It will likely be 
years before the death penalty eligible cases go to trial.

(source: ohio.com)




ILLINOIS:

Joliet Serial Killer Milton Johnson Loses Another Appeal----Milton Johnson was 
sentenced to die for his Will County crimes, but the state's death penalty was 
abolished.



Joliet resident Milton Johnson has spent most of his life living behind the 
walls of a maximum security prison because he is a notorious convicted serial 
killer. These days, Johnson lives at Menard Correctional Center. At one of his 
murder trials, Will County prosecutor Stephen White pointed at the defendant 
and told the jury Johnson was an animal.

This month, Joliet Patch has learned, the 68-year-old Johnson got some more bad 
news, but most people familiar with mass murderer Milton Johnson will be happy.

The Third District Appellate Court has issued an 11-page ruling in Johnson's 
latest postconviction petition, turning it down. The issues in front of the 
judges surround the post-conviction appeal that dates all the way back to Nov. 
23, 1987, court documents note.

During his early thirties, Johnson was convicted of murdering 18-year-old 
Anthony Hackett and raping Hackett's girlfriend, then stabbing her in the 
stomach and leaving her for dead, south of Joliet, near Wilmington, on July 17, 
1983. At his second murder trial, Johnson served as his own criminal defense 
attorney, the August 1983 quadruple murders inside the Greenware By Merry 
ceramic shop at 1405 E. Cass St. in Joliet.

All 4 women were fatally stabbed and one of the victims, 75-year-old Anna Ryan, 
was also shot. Their purses were also taken.

Johnson was sentenced to die in the 1980s for a total of five murders. He was 
also suspected of committing several more murders during the summer of 1983, 
but Will County State's Attorney Edward Petka selected the I-55 murder and the 
ceramic shop murders as the best cases to bring against Johnson at that point 
in time.

Here are some key excerpts from this month's ruling by the Illinois appeals 
court out of the Third District that went against Johnson.

"Defendant contends that the circuit court erred in denying his postconviction 
petition following an evidentiary hearing. Specifically, defendant contends 
that he established that defense counsel provided ineffective assistance for 
failing to move to bar or rebut the State's expert witness who opined as to the 
origin of the bullets recovered from Hackett's body and the cartridges 
recovered from defendant's residence. Upon review, we find the court did not 
err in denying defendant's postconviction petition, because defendant failed to 
establish prejudice resulting from counsel's purported deficient performance."

"To prevail on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a defendant must 
demonstrate that (1) counsel's performance fell below an objective standard of 
reasonableness, and (2) the deficient performance prejudiced the defense. Even 
assuming defense counsel performed deficiently, we find that defendant cannot 
demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that the result would have 
been different because the evidence of defendant's guilt is overwhelming."

Given that the evidence of defendant's guilt is overwhelming without even 
considering (FBI special agent Roger) Peele's expert testimony, any attempt by 
defense counsel to challenge the forensic evidence would have had no impact on 
the jury's determination. At best, the potential rebuttal testimony would have 
demonstrated that it was impossible to state with certainty that the bullets 
recovered from Hackett's body and the cartridges found in defendant's residence 
came from the same box. The rebuttal evidence would not show that the bullets 
came from different boxes. In other words, the defense's expert testimony would 
merely negate Peele's testimony. Consequently, we hold that it is not 
reasonably probable that the outcome of the trial would have been different."

(source: patch.com)








TENNESSEE----impending execution

Tennessee Is Set to Execute Another Man Who Suffered Abuse as a 
Child----Without clemency from the governor, Don Johnson will be put to death 
on May 16



As detailed in his application for clemency, which was delivered to Gov. Bill 
Lee earlier this month, Johnson’s mother Ruby was married to a relentlessly 
brutal man named James Lee who “throughout their 46 years of marriage … treated 
Ruby like a whipped animal.” Her husband slapped, beat and choked her, 
Johnson’s lawyers write. At one point, Ruby fled to Michigan, and a brief 
relationship with another man, Elmer Young, left her pregnant with a baby boy. 
But she returned to James Lee in hopes of finding financial security. “It was 
into this violent and hate-filled home that Don Johnson was born,” Johnson’s 
lawyers write.

They go on: “Donnie Johnson was a frail little boy, with bad eyes, and no love. 
He wore coke bottle glasses and was a regular target of bullies (at school and 
at home). He was routinely and mercilessly beaten by James Lee for any and all 
reasons. James Lee would use a leather shaving strop, a switch, or his fists 
and feet. Through all of this abuse, Don Johnson was kept ignorant of his true 
origin — he was raised believing that James Lee was his biological father, and 
that his biological father hated him.”

Now 68 years old, Don Johnson sits on death row more than 30 years after a 
Shelby County jury convicted him of the murder of his wife, Connie Johnson. 
Barring an act of mercy from the governor, Johnson will be executed on May 16 
at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.

The attorneys pleading on his behalf for that act of mercy have built their 
case on Johnson’s remarkable redemption story, and his reconciliation with 
Connie’s daughter, Cynthia Vaughn.

“This is a case for which clemency was designed,” they write. “While Don 
Johnson’s death sentence may be legally acceptable under all of the analytical 
considerations of dispassionate law, it is not morally right — in the words of 
Alexander Hamilton it would be ‘unduly cruel.’ The remarkable transformation 
that Don has made warrants mercy. Cynthia Vaughn, the person with the greatest 
claim on his life, deserves to have her forgiveness honored.”

Johnson and Vaughn’s relationship is indeed an extraordinary testament to the 
power of forgiveness and the possibility of redemption — one that challenges 
notions about what the death penalty does for victims. But it is Johnson’s 
violent, abusive childhood that makes him fit in perfectly with the men who 
have gone before him into Riverbend’s execution chamber. For the most part, 
this is who we put to death — men who have been victimized, starting at a 
heartrendingly young age, and have gone on to victimize others as adults. Along 
with mental illness, childhood abuse is such a common feature of death row 
prisoners’ stories that one risks becoming inured to the descriptions of 
physical and psychological violence.

All 3 men executed in Tennessee last year were said to have experienced varying 
degrees of physical abuse as children at the hands of their parents.

Billy Ray Irick (executed Aug. 9 by lethal injection) was sent to his first 
mental health institution at the age of 6. He told people “that his mother 
mistreats him, that she ties him up with a rope and beats him,” according to a 
clinical social worker who performed an assessment of him. Ed Zagorski 
(executed Nov. 1 by electrocution) grew up in a dilapidated home with a mother 
who suffered from mental illness and would chase after him trying to beat him. 
On one occasion, according to an affidavit signed by a cousin, Zagorski’s 
mother broke his arm. Even in this context, the details of David Miller’s 
upbringing are particularly disturbing. Miller (executed Dec. 6 by 
electrocution) was repeatedly sexually assaulted by his mother — in addition to 
other family members and adults — who also beat him, whipping him with a belt, 
an extension cord, a wire coat hanger and an umbrella. Miller’s stepfather, 
according to court documents, once “knocked David out of a chair, hit him with 
a board, threw him into a refrigerator with such force it dented the 
refrigerator and bloodied David’s head, dragged him through the house by his 
hair, and twice ran David’s head through the wall.”

In Johnson’s case, after enduring years of violence, he started acting out and 
running away from home. When he was 14, he was sent to a juvenile facility 
known as Jordonia where he lived for six months. Newspaper clippings from 
around that time in the 1960s referred to Jordonia — officially called the 
State Vocational Training School for White Boys — as a “concentration camp” and 
a “prep school for the pen.” In Johnson’s clemency application, his attorneys 
write that he suffered physical abuse there and was victim of an attempted 
rape.

After a brief return home, Johnson — then a teenager — was sent to Pikeville, 
another notorious juvenile facility. Johnson’s attorneys quote newspaper 
reports about the conditions there: “The Kingsport Times-News described a 
sentence to Pikeville as ‘like going to Hell.’ A Murfreesboro Daily 
News-Journal headline read ‘Humans Treated Worse Than Animals, Report Says.’”

As quoted by his attorneys, Johnson describes his stint in the Ohio 
Penitentiary as a relief by comparison: “It was like going from the darkness 
into the light, the conditions in prison were so much better.”

Johnson’s attorneys stress that he “does not place blame for his subsequent 
wrongs on his father, on Jordonia, or on Pikeville.” But to explain is not to 
excuse. People who are abused as children are, of course, not destined for a 
life of violent crime. But is it any surprise that so many men on America’s 
death rows were victims first before they went on to make victims of their own?

(source: Nashville Scene)








LOUISIANA:

Lawmakers to Discuss Death Penalty in Louisiana



State lawmakers will talk about moving forward with the death penalty in 
Louisiana, but they are working to pass a measure to conceal the identities of 
companies that make the drug cocktail used in executions.

Hammond Representative Nicky Muscarello has proposed a measure to hide the 
identities of companies that sell lethal injection drugs or equipment to the 
state. Louisiana has not performed an execution since 2010, and Muscarello says 
a big reason why is drug companies fear retaliation from anti-death penalty 
consumers.

The legislation is similar to laws in Arkansas and Texas.

The Tangipahoa Parish Republican says he was moved to propose this measure 
after hearing testimony from families of victims who’s attackers arelingering 
on death row. This includes the victims of Shreveport serial killer Nathanie 
Code who has been on death row for more than 25 years.

Muscarello says those families were promised an execution, and this would help 
increase the odds of that happening. Muscarello says the death penalty is law, 
and it’s the legislature’s responsibility to make the enforcement of law as 
feasible as possible.

Governor Edwards says he would sign the legislation if it were to reach his 
desk.

(source: KEEL news)








ARKANSAS:

State heads to trial in inmates' death-drug suit----Execution sedative’s 
effectiveness at issue in federal case that begins Tuesday



A federal lawsuit filed by death row inmates has renewed a court fight over 
whether the sedative Arkansas uses for lethal injections causes torturous 
executions, two years after the state raced to put eight convicted killers to 
death in 11 days before a previous batch of the drug expired.

Arkansas recently expanded the secrecy surrounding its lethal injection drug 
sources, and the case heading to trial Tuesday could affect its efforts to 
restart executions that have been on hold because of a lack of the drugs. It'll 
also be the latest in a series of legal battles over midazolam, a sedative that 
other states have moved away from after claims that it doesn't render inmates 
fully unconscious during lethal injections.

States that want to avoid unnecessarily inhumane executions will be watching 
closely, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty 
Information Center, which has criticized the way states carry out the death 
penalty.

But, Dunham added, "states that are watching because they want to figure out 
how to just execute people will be looking to see what Arkansas is able to get 
away with."

Only 4 of the 8 executions scheduled in Arkansas over 11 days in 2017 happened, 
with courts halting the others. The state currently doesn't have any executions 
scheduled, and Arkansas' supply of the three drugs used in its lethal injection 
process has expired. Another round of multiple executions is unlikely if 
Arkansas finds more drugs, since only one death row inmate has exhausted all 
his appeals.

This time, Arkansas isn't racing against the clock to execute inmates before a 
drug expires. The state currently doesn't have any execution drugs available, 
but officials believe they'll be able to get more once the secrecy law takes 
effect this summer.

State Attorney General Leslie Rutledge says the inmates in the case have a very 
high burden to meet and cites a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month against a 
Missouri death row inmate. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority in 
that case, wrote that the U.S. Constitution "does not guarantee a prisoner a 
painless death." Rutledge called the federal case in Arkansas the latest 
attempt by death row inmates to delay their sentences from being carried out.

"Juries gave these individuals lawful sentences for committing the most heinous 
acts against a human being, taking another human being's innocent life," 
Rutledge, a Republican, said. "We must see these sentences carried out. The 
families of these victims deserve justice."

30 states have the death penalty. Governors in 4 of them -- Oregon, Colorado, 
Pennsylvania and California -- have declared moratoriums, and court rulings 
have effectively put executions on hold in several others.

The list of death penalty states is poised to shrink, though, with New 
Hampshire lawmakers sending the governor a repeal measure. Bills to repeal or 
significantly curtail the death penalty have been introduced in 18 states this 
year, Dunham said.

Much of the trial over Arkansas' process will focus on midazolam, which critics 
have said doesn't render inmates fully unconscious before the other lethal 
injection drugs are administered. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld midazolam's use 
in executions in 2015, but its use continues to prompt legal challenges 
nationwide. Seven states have used the sedative as the first administered in a 
three-drug execution process, and two have used it in a two-drug process, 
according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Critics have cited problematic executions involving the sedative as evidence 
that it doesn't work properly. Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett remained alive 
for 43 minutes, groaning and writhing on a gurney after an intravenous line was 
improperly connected in his 2014 execution. Inmate Joseph Wood gasped for air, 
snorted and his belly inflated and deflated during the nearly two hours it took 
him to die during his execution in Arizona in 2014.

Under Arkansas' execution process, inmates are first administered midazolam. 
They're then administered vecuronium bromide, which stops the lungs, followed 
by potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Attorneys for a group of death row inmates argue that two of Arkansas' 
executions in 2017 demonstrate the problems with midazolam. One execution cited 
is that of Kenneth Williams, who witnesses said lurched and convulsed 20 times 
before he died. Another inmate, Marcel Williams, arched his back and breathed 
heavily during his execution, according to a witness.

Based on past court rulings, the inmates will also have to prove there's an 
alternative to the state's lethal injection method available that's likely to 
be less painful. The inmates' attorneys have argued those alternatives include 
firing squads and a barbiturate commonly used in physician-assisted suicide.

Other states have moved away from midazolam over concerns about the drug. 
Ohio's Republican governor earlier this year ordered the prison system to look 
at alternative drugs after a federal judge said midazolam could cause severe 
pain and needless suffering. Oklahoma put executions on hold in 2015 after a 
series of mishaps that included a botched execution involving midazolam, and 
the state is now developing a plan to execute inmates using nitrogen gas.

"If the court in Arkansas finds that midazolam is a drug that doesn't do what 
the state claims that it does and in effect tortures prisoners when it's used 
in executions, that's going to be another state that may not be able to use the 
drug," said Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender in Arizona who has 
been involved in litigation in that state and Oklahoma over the use of 
midazolam.

The trial comes weeks after Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into law a 
measure prohibiting the release of information that could directly or 
indirectly identify the source of its executions drugs. The measure was in 
response to state Supreme Court rulings that the current secrecy law doesn't 
cover the manufacturers of Arkansas' drugs. Arkansas' supply of drugs has 
expired, and prison officials last year said they wouldn't search for more 
until the secrecy measure was enacted.

The bill faced criticism from media organizations and death penalty opponents, 
especially over its criminal penalties for recklessly disclosing the 
information. Two pharmaceutical companies also objected to the law, saying it 
would hamper their ability to ensure their drugs aren't used in executions. The 
new law takes effect in late July.

(source: arkansasonline.com)